Chets Creek Elementary is a K-5 professional learning community with 1,300 learners in Jacksonville, FL. Coaching Chronicles was first created when I served as the school's Instructional Coach (2004-2011). I have since served as a third grade learning leader(2011-2013), and am now the school's Assistant Principal. Regardless of my role, this blog shares snippets of our learning journey and Creek Life.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Things That Come in Groups

In Room 207, our third grade mathematicians are excited to have embarked on a new journey in multiplication. On the first day, as part of their Work Session, students brainstormed a list of things that come in groups. In Closing, we made an anchor chart that will hang during the unit as a reference.

During this unit, we emphasize that we are finding "groups of" items. For example, There are 4 tricycles. There are 3 wheels on each tricycle. How many wheels are there in all? Students would write 4 x 3 = 12 and say, "4 groups of 3 equals 12 wheels." We expect this language so students keep the conceptual understanding that they are finding groups of items.

On the second day, students created pictures of things that come in groups. The task required students to choose an item and draw several groups of the item. Then, they had to write a sentence about the three pieces of mathematical information in their picture. They were asked to include an addition and multiplication equation, too. I've included several student samples below.

Even though we are only a few days into our multiplication unit, students are uncovering multiple strategies for solving their problems. Our anchor chart lists some of our strategies so far. Stay tuned for more to come, we'll be adding more strategies as next week unfolds.